Postcards from London

A gay movie which, for better or worse, is strikingly individual.

Harris Dickinson

What
a very curious film this is! If I say that it is about a teenager
from Essex who arrives in London's Soho in search of a world full of
mystery and possibilities and becomes a rent boy, it may sound orthodox
enough as a movie likely to attract a gay audience. But, starting with
the fact that its writer/director Steve McLean virtually avoids sex
scenes and excludes full nudity, Postcards from London
handles this storyline in a manner that makes it unique. What we have
here is a totally stylised world with all the filming done on sets and
a sense of design that brings to mind the least realistic films made by
Fassbinder, not least 1982's Querelle.
This artificiality also extends to the dialogue and, if all this is a
kind of conceit creating a work of specialised appeal, it nevertheless
proceeds consistently and with real visual stylishness (colour
photography by Annika Summerson, production design by Ollie Tiong).

There
is, however, another aspect to this piece that seems as central as the
stylisation. Jim is adopted as the fifth member of a group of young
male escorts who call themselves the Raconteurs and whose speciality is
the post-coital conversation that they engage in with their clients,
usually older men, on the subject of art. This may sound unlikely but
it is in line with McLean's notion of giving us a film that constantly
references gay artists. Although this extends to writers such as Cavafy
and E. M. Forster, the focus is mainly on exponents of visual art. That
includes dialogue referencing Fassbinder and Pasolini alongside actors
such as Joe Dallessandro but at the centre are painters. The first
painting to be seen is by Titian but, creating a relevant link to the
cinema of Derek Jarman, Caravaggio is the artist most prominently
featured here. However, a fictional character, Max, to whom Jim becomes
a muse, echoes Francis Bacon whose relationship with George Dyer is
touched on more than once.

Postcards from London
is certainly highly original even if it seems to be addressed rather
snobbishly to gays who relish being intellectual in their talk and
outlook. Visually, it lives up to its ambitions, but after a while one
wants something with more dramatic weight or sparkle (the talk is smart
rather than witty and even at 90 minutes the film seems to be
taking a long time to say very little). From the outset, we learn that
Jim tends to faint in front of great paintings and it appears that this
happens because he suffers from a psychosomatic disorder known as
Stendhal's syndrome. It sounds like an unlikely invention for the film
but does apparently exist in reality. However, that doesn't prevent the
later plot development seeming silly when Jim's condition is shown as
enabling him to tell if a painting is a fake because then he doesn't
faint! The artificiality makes Jim a less rewarding role for Harris
Dickinson than the one he took so well in the American movie Beach Rats
(2017) and, while the conclusion sees Jim asserting his independence,
this stand seems to come out of nowhere. The movie's best moments are
incidentals - the soundtrack rendering of 'My Funny Valentine' by
supporting actor Jonah Hauer-King rather than by a female vocalist and
a scene between Dickinson and, if I identify him correctly, Silas
Carson in which gay feelings for once become palpable.